"We knew what we wanted with the martial arts in this movie,'' Simon Pegg says. ''But we developed a very special style: we call it pub fu.'' He's talking about the surprisingly robust action sequences - many of them taking place within the confines of a pub - in his new film, The World's End.

It's an apocalypse-pub crawl-horror-comedy, the third in a series he's made with long-time collaborators Nick Frost and co-writer and director Edgar Wright. Following 2004's Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (2007), The World's End is the final instalment of what the trio like to call ''the Cornetto trilogy''. The idea for this movie had been knocking around for several years but was put on hold, partly because they were doing other projects and partly because of the nature of the comedy.

Alcohol acts as a kind of time machine ... the characters are sucked down this regressive rabbit hole, so they're like little kids on this adventure.

''I don't think we were ready back then, creatively or emotionally, to make it,'' Pegg says. ''We had to reach that crucial point - the 40 moment - that obviously inspires certain thoughts and re-evaluations.''

Pull the other one: a pub crawl is interrupted by an alien invasion in The World's End, the final part in the Three Flavours Cornetto comedy trilogy. Photo: Adam Fulton

The three made forays into Hollywood. Wright's work as a writer-director included Scott Pilgrim vs the World, a clever, inventive adaptation of the graphic-novel series. Frost and Pegg wrote and starred in a comedy, Paul, about two geeks who meet an alien. Pegg had roles in The Adventures of Tintin, the Mission: Impossible series and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek films.

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Even so, at 40, thought and re-evaluation is the last thing going through the mind of Pegg's character, Gary King. Wright describes him as ''a walking car crash of a man, deeply deeply flawed'', who nevertheless will play a significant role in the fate of humankind.

The movie begins with a flashback to a night in 1990, when Gary and four of his mates set out to follow the legendary Golden Mile of their fictional home town, Newton Haven. The course consists of 12 pubs, beginning with an establishment called the First Post, and finishing at the World's End. Their task: to have a beer in each one. But something went very wrong on that night, and Gary is determined to put things right.

His life hasn't worked out as he might have hoped: his version of a 12-step recovery program is ''to get the band back together'', Blues Brothers style, and follow the Golden Mile one more time. Persuading his friends (played by Frost, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan and Paddy Considine) takes all his ingenuity: they've all left their home town and got on with their lives, have families and jobs and a sense of gravitas. They're not interested in going back, while Gary can't think of doing anything else.

Gradually, the characters' defences break down. ''Alcohol acts as a kind of time machine,'' Wright says, ''and I wanted the actors to become more childlike. They are sucked down this regressive rabbit hole, so they're like little kids on this adventure.''

One of the influences on the story was a script he wrote when he was 21 about teenagers on a pub crawl.

''I never did anything with it,'' Wright says. But he admits: ''I did try to recreate the night with Simon and Nick, when I was in my late 20s, and was struck by how pathetic it was.''

Another element in the narrative is the nature of going back. ''Me and Simon are from small towns,'' Wright says, ''and we constantly have that strange, bitter-sweet experience of going back home and increasingly feeling alienated. Have I changed or has the town changed? And the answer is both.''

In Newton Haven, the answer to the question takes on a particularly sinister comic resonance. It's a revelation that has some familiar, comically explored science-fiction twists.

To underscore the theme of change and control, Pegg says, ''We wanted to shoot it in a garden city, one of those purpose-built postwar suburbs that are very designed. When you look at them from above, they're like crop circles.''

Frost extols the virtues of Marcus Rowland, who has been their production designer since the 1990s TV series Spaced, on which they all worked. ''There's not a piece of the frame he hasn't left his mark on,'' he says. The movie is full of small details, clues to what's going on, constant foreshadowing, Pegg says.

They call the film series the Cornetto trilogy, and make sure an ice-cream cone always makes an appearance. ''It's a silly connecting tissue,'' Wright says, but it's a way of light-heartedly signalling a sense of continuity. Apart from each film exploring a different genre - zombie movies in Shaun of the Dead, mismatched-cop buddy films in Hot Fuzz, a particular strand of science fiction in The World's End - there are recurring themes. ''They're all about the individual versus collective, about taking responsibility, and about perpetual adolescence.'' Frost and Pegg are planning to write another script together. ''We have an idea, but the one we have at this point would work better if we were slightly older,'' Frost says. Pegg describes it as ''quite improvisational in design'' and reckons it will work best in about five or six years.

''The good thing for us is that we're friends anyway,'' he says. ''Whether or not we work together, we'll see each other and be in each other's lives. Maybe we'll take a break for a while, maybe we'll do a bunch of stuff apart, to change the way we're regarded. People have got used to seeing us together.''

Pegg's next project is an Australian film: he's looking forward to come back in September, he says, to do a noir thriller, Kill Me Three Times. It will be shot in Perth and directed by Kriv Stenders (Red Dog).

Frost has a new comedy coming out this year, Cuban Fury, a comeback story about a former salsa champion looking for redemption.

Wright, meanwhile, has a big-budget superhero project he's been working on for several years about one of Marvel Comics' lesser-known figures: Ant-Man. It's in

pre-production. There's one clear advantage to a project that has been delayed for a while, he says. ''The longer it has taken for it to happen, the better the special effects will be.''

The ancient art of Chortle Kombat

Australian martial artist and fight choreographer Brad Allan, who got his start with Jackie Chan's team, was enlisted for The World's End to help the British filmmakers create the new form of martial arts they envisioned: ''pub fu''.

''We wanted these scenes to be one continuous shot; long takes with very few cutaways,'' says co-writer Simon Pegg, who plays a 40-year-old setting out to recreate an epic pub crawl he and his mates did two decades earlier.

''No weapons, no guns or knives, just good old-fashioned brawling,'' co-star Nick Frost says. ''And it's nice to see actors actually doing it. We love doing our own stunts, and we did 99 per cent of it. I can't think of something I didn't do.'' He pauses. ''Oh, hang on, yes, I can: there was a forward roll through a broken window that they didn't let me do.''

The legendary Chan is one of the people thanked in the credits of The World's End. And at the Australian premiere of the movie, in a Melbourne Central cinema, director Edgar Wright said it was particularly pleasing to be at a place where Chan had shot Mr Nice Guy (1997). Chan carried a famous escalator stunt sequence at the city shopping centre.

The World's End opens on August 1

1 comment so far

Unfortunately this is a lesser concoction to cult-classics in SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. It isn't as sharp and witty as those two films. The idea is a pretty good one but falls flat with cliched bland dialogue and repetitive action. Like the previous two films these pics largely take place in english pubs. This really needed a subversive subtext that isn't there. It was like watching a Dr Who episode.